Open Collections

Description

Timber harvesting makes up a sizeable portion of the British Columbia economy. The resulting habitat loss and ecosystem disturbance alter the diversity of the animals living in affected forests. This dataset stems from a series of long term experiments in UBC's Malcolm Knapp Research Forest (MKRF). This land is managed cooperatively by the Katzie (q̓ic̓əy̓) First Nation and the UBC Faculty of Forestry & Environmental Stewardship. It is located in the CWH (coastal western hemlock) BEC zone, and contains mostly dense 90-100 year-old second growth following primarily fire-related disturbance. The dataset documents responses of ground-dwelling invertebrate communities to a variety of riparian forest management treatments spanning 1998–2008. Using a BACI (before/after/control/intervention) design, the experiment tested the effects of thinning, clearcutting, and buffer zones of various widths using pitfall traps. Community-level diversity metrics will tell the story of logging treatments and their effects on terrestrial invertebrates. The results are at various stages in the publication process, and this archive will be updated once these manuscripts are published.